New ways of using computers in language teaching As educators in the 21st century we are required to use the computers in the classroom. The computer can be a tool for our students as well as us. Teachers can check which vocabulary to teach and how frequent these words are in the language or in a particular text with the help of a corpus. What is a corpus? There are a few different definitions of the word "corpus":
"ASCII text: American Standard for Computer Information Interchange text. ASCII text is the most commonly used format for storing texts in a corpus and making it possible for all concordancing programs to use the corpus. It is something known as DOS text or plain text."
Concordance: "A list of occurrences of a word (or words) printed with a context. This context can be a single line of characters with the target word printed at the center, a sentence, or another context. One of the most common ways to print out information is the key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordance."
Concordancer:"A computer program that allows you to create concordances of words held in a corpus."
Corpus:"A collection of texts (from written or spoken sources) in this case, in a form that can be read by a computer"
Word list:"A list of all the individual words in your corpus, sorted either by frequency or alphabetically. The words am, are and is are treated as separate
(Boswood, T. New ways of using computers in language teaching. P 253-254)
According to the article there are two main kinds of corpora: A General corpus – this is a huge collection of divers texts (they are divers in styles and topics) .This kind of corpus is useful for getting information about words that are specifically used in many different ways in the language. A Specific corpus – this kind of corpus is more useful for a language teacher. One way of building it is through CD-ROMs containing newspapers and library texts. Using these texts you can build any kind of corpus that you wish, in any topic that you would like. Another kind of corpus is the "learners' corpus" and it’s a collection of written language and is used for interlanguage studies and can help teachers to identify their students language problems and the way the students language is developing.
You can create a specific corpus by using the eight letters +period +three letter naming system to provide some form of logical suffix in order to identify files. What can I do with my corpus? If we, as educators have a corpus, we can use it with our students in many ways such as:
To enrich our students vocabulary and raise their awareness of grammar.
To assist students with their reading tasks and to help them specify a syllabus.
To teach aspects of written discourse for academic purposes.
This is one example of how a corpus can help us in teaching English:
Your students overuse the word "big" in the contexts of words like "city (ies)", difference(s) and problem(s). You want to help them expand their vocabulary and therefore, you create a corpus of "problem" and ask learners to identify words that they could use instead of "big".
If we give our students access to this kind of information it makes it possible for them to learn in a more problem-solving, investigating way.
Here are some links teachers can use for teaching while using corpus: http://www.just-the-word.com/ (http://forbetterenglish.com iteslj.org/Articles/Krieger-Corpus.html www.longmanhomeusa.com/.../pl_biber_conrad_monograph_lo_3.p. www.cambridge.org/.../Cambridge-International-Co... - United Kingdom My personal responce: I think that as a teacher I can use the copus before I introduce texts to my students. The corpus is another way of using the tecnology in our teaching in order to help our students to improve their language and to learn it in an interesting and motivating way.
New ways of using computers in language teaching
As educators in the 21st century we are required to use the computers in the classroom. The computer can be a tool for our students as well as us. Teachers can check which vocabulary to teach and how frequent these words are in the language or in a particular text with the help of a corpus.
What is a corpus?
There are a few different definitions of the word "corpus":
- "ASCII text: American Standard for Computer Information Interchange text. ASCII text is the most commonly used format for storing texts in a corpus and making it possible for all concordancing programs to use the corpus. It is something known as DOS text or plain text."
- Concordance: "A list of occurrences of a word (or words) printed with a context. This context can be a single line of characters with the target word printed at the center, a sentence, or another context. One of the most common ways to print out information is the key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordance."
- Concordancer:"A computer program that allows you to create concordances of words held in a corpus."
- Corpus:"A collection of texts (from written or spoken sources) in this case, in a form that can be read by a computer"
- Word list:"A list of all the individual words in your corpus, sorted either by frequency or alphabetically. The words am, are and is are treated as separate
(Boswood, T. New ways of using computers in language teaching. P 253-254)According to the article there are two main kinds of corpora:
A General corpus – this is a huge collection of divers texts (they are divers in styles and topics) .This kind of corpus is useful for getting information about words that are specifically used in many different ways in the language.
A Specific corpus – this kind of corpus is more useful for a language teacher. One way of building it is through CD-ROMs containing newspapers and library texts. Using these texts you can build any kind of corpus that you wish, in any topic that you would like. Another kind of corpus is the "learners' corpus" and it’s a collection of written language and is used for interlanguage studies and can help teachers to identify their students language problems and the way the students language is developing.
You can create a specific corpus by using the eight letters +period +three letter naming system to provide some form of logical suffix in order to identify files.
What can I do with my corpus?
If we, as educators have a corpus, we can use it with our students in many ways such as:
- To enrich our students vocabulary and raise their awareness of grammar.
- To assist students with their reading tasks and to help them specify a syllabus.
- To teach aspects of written discourse for academic purposes.
This is one example of how a corpus can help us in teaching English:Your students overuse the word "big" in the contexts of words like "city (ies)", difference(s) and problem(s). You want to help them expand their vocabulary and therefore, you create a corpus of "problem" and ask learners to identify words that they could use instead of "big".
If we give our students access to this kind of information it makes it possible for them to learn in a more problem-solving, investigating way.
Here are some links teachers can use for teaching while using corpus:
http://www.just-the-word.com/
(http://forbetterenglish.com
iteslj.org/Articles/Krieger-Corpus.html
www.longmanhomeusa.com/.../pl_biber_conrad_monograph_lo_3.p.
www.cambridge.org/.../Cambridge-International-Co... - United Kingdom
My personal responce: I think that as a teacher I can use the copus before I introduce texts to my students. The corpus is another way of using the tecnology in our teaching in order to help our students to improve their language and to learn it in an interesting and motivating way.